You Should Be Ashamed
by Stephen Ratliff
Summary: Special to the Prophet. Professor McGonagall has a few words to those who vandalized a certain memorial. Side story to Summer Rituals
_**Editor's Note**_ _: We at the Daily Prophet are proud that Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry chose to submit this admonishment to_ _us. It is our great hope to see more from her pen in our pages in the future._

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Recently I had the opportunity to retrieve some family heirlooms from the family estate of one of my students. I do not often retrieve heirlooms for my students. Any Gryffindor will tell you that I am generally quite unsympathetic to pleas to collect items left at home. I do not generally have the time and other resources are generally available to my students.

However, in this particular case, there was cause, and I admit a certain softness for my orphaned Gryffindors. This past year's first years are a particular favorite of mine, as much as I have them, and when I received his letter, asking me to be godmother to his child, I could not deny him. He does not know a lot about his parents, having only had a single birthday, so any connection to them is precious to him. Knowing of his own baptism, I immediately thought of one item that his family would want him to use.

It is not easy to get permission to remove anything from a cottage sealed by the Ministry, nor should it be. Unfortunately it is much easier to vandalize the border wall with poorly written graffiti. That is what I found when I arrived to retrieve a baptismal gown for the use of my student. I felt great shame when I recognized the work of many of my students, current and former, on that wall. It was even on the sign put there by the Ministry.

Many of you are probably dismissing this in your minds, believing that sealed cottage could not be for anyone important. It must be a criminal of some sort, whose house had been sealed during their incarceration. I know my students well. As a whole, there have been no greater sources of self-serving excuses presented in the world than to me from my students.

I do not accept them. Nor should you accept them, should you know of one of those who desecrated this cottage. You should feel ashamed if you have done this to anyone's home. I doubt you are though. You will, by the time I'm done.

Many of you are wondering who I went to retrieve the baptismal gown for? Who did I accept the request to be godmother for? Many have asked me before, and I have not often accepted. Indeed, I was asked and said no to become godmother of the student in question.

If I could avoid it, and achieve the same ends, I would not identify the student. If he had said no after reading my first draft of this very article, I would not have identified him. However, he said yes, and is quite a bit more angry than I am about it.

For his father and his mother gave their lives protecting him. They died facing down one of the worst Dark Lords that have plagued this land. His mother died so he could live. Yet the home where he was born and lived the first part of his life stands unguarded, every reachable surface, not within the preservation wards covered with graffiti.

Harry Potter was happy to get a heirloom baptismal gown to dress his son Jimmy Anthony for his baptism last Sunday. He was not happy with those who have turned the lane in front of his parent's house into a trash strewn, graffiti covered alley, even obscuring the sign placed in memorial. He was not happy with a Ministry that could not be bothered to maintain what they decided to memorialize.

I am not happy either.

If you are one of those who chose to leave their mark behind, you should be ashamed. If you stood by and did not say anything against it, you should be ashamed. If you were responsible for maintaining the site, and trusted spells and enchantments over personal attention, you should be ashamed. We all should be ashamed.

For there is a boy, with a baby of his own now, who one day soon will be going to visit the house that was once his. And he will see what you left behind, over what was left behind him. And that is a shame.


End file.
